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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26707447">Of Course</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnneShirleyCuthbert/pseuds/AnneShirleyCuthbert'>AnneShirleyCuthbert</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Code Name Verity Series - Elizabeth Wein</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Explicit Language, F/F, F/M, Sexual Content, also fyi this fic contains:, also: maddie and jamie are Very Into Each Other, maddie brodatt is very bi no i will not take criticism, there's a little bit of maddie/julie and a lot a bit of maddie/jamie</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 06:33:37</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,411</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26707447</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnneShirleyCuthbert/pseuds/AnneShirleyCuthbert</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Maddie Brodatt fell in love once again with a Beaufort-Stuart, but this time it was the youngest son rather than the youngest daughter of the family who captured her heart.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jamie Beaufort-Stuart/Maddie Brodatt, Julie Beaufort-Stuart/Maddie Brodatt</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Of Course</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
The weather outside was unseasonably warm for April in Scotland, and the Lost Boys of Craig Castle had taken full advantage of the surprising sunshine by scattering to the fringes of the estate’s carefully manicured lawn, running Maddie around in circles in a particularly competitive game of hide-and-go-seek. Ducking into bushes and haphazardly scaling tree trunks in a way that would have usually made Maddie a bit nervous had she not been practically drunk on the sweetness of the balmy springtime air, everyone had been enjoying the intrigue and excitement of a good game of hide-and-seek until Anthony, a new charge from Glasgow with an accent so thick you could spread it on toast, scraped his shin while shimmying down from his hiding spot in a Scotch pine. The minimal blood loss resulting from this injury ended up prompting the whole crew to race back inside the house and set up a mock-operating room on the dining table, on top of which Anthony was bandaged within an inch of his life and declared fit as a fiddle by each attending surgeon (including Maddie, who had been regulated to the position of Operating Physician #7). With their newest charge taken care of, the boys then decided to recover from their hard labor by taking a collective cat nap before Jamie, who was free from RAF duties for the weekend, arrived home. With each child snug in their respective bedrooms, Maddie decided to take a bath, hoping to scrub off the blood spatter, sweat, and general grime of the day before her husband got home from the airbase.
</p><p>
<i>Husband.</i> The word still felt strange on her tongue when she said it out loud. When talking to her friends at the airbase, or to her grandparents, or even to the Lady Esmé Beaufort-Stuart, Maddie would address Jamie with any and every moniker other than husband: instead of my husband, he was <i>Jamie, James, RAF’s crack pilot, the Toeless Pobble, the boy in my bed, the man who I married.</i> In her own mind, however, she cherished the word “husband”. To her, it was a special term, one of endearment, of promise, of love. Sometimes, when they were alone together eating lunch at the scarred wooden table in the castle’s basement kitchen, or lying in late on the rare mornings they both had off from flying, or co-piloting on the way home from the war-torn mainland, she would look at the angles of his face and the wave of his hair and just think <i>My husband. Mine.</i>
</p><p>
Their relationship was a surprising one, to be sure. After Julie—for better or worse, everything in Maddie’s life was irrevocably split into “Before Julie” and “After Julie”—she had just assumed she’d never fall in love ever again. The trauma of losing not just her best friend but also the first person she ever truly cared about, could see a future with, stayed with Maddie long after the physical bumps and bruises of Ormaie had healed. Her grief manifested itself in a variety of ways; most often, she would simply wake up with tears streaming down her face, one of her bunkmates in the airfield sleeping quarters leaning over her bed in an attempt to wake her from some unknown nightmare. However, Maddie also found herself developing some strange, seemingly random neuroses after Julie’s death: she had a sudden aversion to the scent of roses, she felt unsettled by the sound of running water, and with increasingly regularity her hands would start to shake so badly that she had trouble holding a mug of tea during mess hall breakfasts, the tremors sending the hot brew spilling over the lip of the ceramic and onto her hands, leaving behind angry red burns.
</p><p>
Maddie knew she had a problem, knew that grief was choking her alive despite her best attempts to distract herself with flying and paperwork and Just Getting On With It, but she didn’t know what to do about the overwhelming guilt and sense of loss that she wore like an albatross around her neck each and every day. She didn’t want her grandparents in Stockport to know she was hurting for fear that they demand she leave flying, and all of her friends—both civilian and military—had their own troubles to worry about.  So, instead of talking about her grief, she tried losing herself in romantic entanglements, channeling Julie in a clumsy way with too-practiced charm and a head-tossing laugh that was not her own, that left her throat bare to the men—and often women, as Maddie couldn’t forget Julie and her body and the night she lost her virginity to her best friend— who would stumble out of RAF dances with Maddie’s red lipstick on their collars. It was decidedly un-Maddie-like behavior, but that’s why it was so appealing; it gave Maddie the opportunity to step outside the heaviness of her own body, to forget herself and her loss for a night.
</p><p>
The only time Maddie truly felt the weight of her sadness ease a little was when she was at Craig Castle. Taking the Right Honorable Lady Esmé Beaufort-Stuart up on her offer to visit, Maddie spent her rare days off at the Beaufort-Stuart estate, helping Esmé keep the shuttered mansion and its diverse array of inhabitants in somewhat presentable shape. Jamie was often at the castle as well—whether it was chance, fate, or one of their more romantic friends playing God while making the flight schedules each month, Maddie and Jamie often had the same days off—and his presence somehow made Maddie feel as comfortable as a humble Stockport girl possibly could in an old, fantastically storied castle. They spent much of their time there together, herding the Lost Boys and cooking with Esmé and staying up late talking, cups of tea sitting cold and forgotten as they whispered back and forth. It was during these conversations that Maddie finally felt comfortable enough to open up and tell Jamie about her relationship with Julie, about her desperate flings on the airbase, about how she wasn’t sure if she’d ever get over the trauma that had settled into her spine, seeped its way into her bloodstream.
</p><p>
As confessions are wont to do, telling Jamie about the fears and pains and pleasures of her past beget some confessions of his own, and she learned that he carried the same weights that she did. He told her over a morning egg scramble that he sometimes felt phantom pains in his missing fingers; he told her, both of them drunk at 3 o’clock in the morning on a bottle of champagne that Maddie had swiped from the airfield’s post-flight plunder parties, that he jerked awake almost every night in a cold sweat, the deafening roar of the Baltic Sea in his ears. He told her that he missed Julie more than he thought was possible, that he was glad that Julie had been able to find a partner in Maddie before she died. He told her that he blamed himself, sometimes, for leaving Julie behind in France, but that he never once blamed Maddie for pulling the trigger. That particular confession left Maddie in tears, blubbering in typical Maddie fashion in Jamie’s arms until she felt like a hard-scrubbed kitchen rag; wrung-out, but also clean in a way that she hadn’t experienced in a while.
</p><p>
It was shortly after that conversation that they started sleeping together.
</p><p>
It wasn’t romantic, not at first. In fact, during the first nights they slept together, they ended up in one another’s beds simply in search of something to hold on to when the nightmares got too intense to sleep alone, their motives for being close as innocent as a child’s. It continued in that fashion for a while, but the first time that Maddie woke up in Jamie’s arms with a certain tightness settled low in her stomach, a heat that had not been there the countless other times they had slept side-by-side in an attempt to beat back the images of war that haunted them both, all she could think was, <i>Of course.</i>
</p><p>
Maddie Brodatt fell in love once again with a Beaufort-Stuart, but this time it was the youngest son rather than the youngest daughter of the family who captured her heart.
</p><p>
“Maddie?”
</p><p>
The sound of her husband’s voice broke through Maddie’s reverie, and she straightened up in the clawfoot bathtub to turn and face the door. “In here!”
</p><p>
She heard him walk into their bedroom from the hall, close the door, and drop his flight bag on the floor, right next to the large antique chest that held the dried flowers of her wedding boquet and the stacked recipe cards of Julie’s wartime testimony. As Maddie settled herself back into the tub, the water still hot enough to fog up the room a little, Jamie walked in.
</p><p>
“Hello there,” he said, his face breaking into a smile at the sight of her. “Where are the troops?”
</p><p>
“Tuckered out. They’ve been asleep for about a half hour, so we’ve got maybe another forty minutes or so until they come running up looking for supper.”
</p><p>
“Oh, good.” Jamie knelt down and leaned over the edge of the tub, catching her lips against his in a short kiss that did nothing to hide the heat that simmered between them. Maddie leaned forward as he pulled back, chasing his touch with a sparkle in her eyes.
</p><p>
“Want to join me? Forty minutes is long enough to get you clean.” She lifted one had out of the bath to swipe at a smear of engine oil that stained the cuff of his shirt, then pressed her mouth against his again, deepening the kiss a little.
</p><p>
“Not nearly long enough,” he murmured against her lips, and Maddie’s cheeks flushed pink, though this time not from the heat of the bath. She knew Jamie’s little tells well enough by this point, and the timbre of his voice when he said that—low, rich, his accent slightly stronger than usual—was more than enough to jumpstart her senses and spark the thoughts that were never too far from her mind: the push-pull ecstasy of him inside of her, his warm hands on her hips and on her back and between her thighs, of feeling taken care of and challenged all in one movement, one moment, one man.
</p><p>
The first time they had sex had been unexpected, to say the least. They had been sleeping in the same bed for a while by that point, but neither of them had yet acted on the growing feelings that were becoming more and more obvious with each passing day. It wasn’t until they were sitting on the ledge of the Craig Castle library windowsill, legs dangling and the silence between them charged with an electricity so powerful it threatened to burn them both up with wanting, that Maddie finally said “Ma cherie!” to break the tension and they both laughed, and both went in for the kiss that would change their lives for good.
</p><p>
They were alone in the house that day—Esmé had taken the Lost Boys to the city center to help roll bandages for the front lines—which allowed Maddie and Jamie to explore one another without fear of a ten-year-old bursting into the room with a request for a piggy-back ride. They took advantage of that reality, tentatively at first with gentle hands and brushing lips, then more intensely when they clambered in from their perch on the windowsill to the floor of the library, Maddie’s skirt rucked up and Jamie’s hair mussed from her clutching fingers as he pressed his mouth to her cunt, giving her the pleasure she forgot could come to life when fucking someone you love. They didn’t have a condom so, not wanting to be parents anytime soon what with the war being on, they did everything but make love, ending up sweaty and satisfied an hour later, completely naked and giggling fit to burst on the library floor.
</p><p>
Sleeping in the same bed took on a slightly different dynamic after that.
</p><p>
Being with Jamie was unlike anything else Maddie had ever experienced; she hadn’t been a blushing virgin by any means, but she had never before felt so close to someone before any clothes were taken off. Being with him was better than getting hot and heavy with stray airmen at RAF dances, better than kissing the airfield kitchen girls during their fifteen-minute cigarette breaks, better than being with Julie, in a way, because with Jamie she knew that he accepted her, ghosts and all; she hadn’t had any ghosts when she’d first kissed Julie.
</p><p>
Being with him was a little bit like flying, if she was being honest with herself.
</p><p>
“Well, I’ll take what I can get.” Maddie smiled as she said it and reached up to unbutton the front of Jamie’s shirtsleeves, dripping bathwater be damned. As in everyday life, she was nothing if not efficient, and between the two of them Jamie was soon unclothed and had slipped into the water at the far end of the tub. Making a concerted effort not to entangle their legs or accidentally get her hair wet (she, like all Staunch English Patriots, refrained from washing her hair everyday to conserve her supply of soap), Maddie made her way across the small tub and settled herself onto Jamie’s lap, facing him and winding her arms around his neck. The little sigh of contentment that he let out when she touched him sent a twinge through her lower belly, and she suddenly realized that forty minutes was most definitely <i>not</i> going to be long enough.
</p><p>
“Maddie,” Jamie said, wrapping his arms around her bare waist to pull her closer and further down into the water, “You’re playing a dangerous game here.” Apparently, he could feel the clock ticking, too.
</p><p>
“Am I?” This was where the fun began; teasing one another, basking in the sheer delight of skin against skin. The air in the bathroom was warm, and Maddie felt each and every drop of water on her body, each and every touch point between herself and this man she loved so much.
</p><p>
“You are,” Jamie confirmed, tilting his head to kiss Maddie on the neck. He ran his hands up and down her body, molding his hands to the length of her back and the curve of her thighs in so intimate a way that Maddie’s legs tightened around his waist of their own accord, holding her flush to his lap. He was already half-hard, and she rocked against him once, twice, just to tease him a little more; she could tell that her ministrations affected him when he nipped at her neck, causing her to gasp.
</p><p>
“Don’t you dare leave a mark,” she said, though secretly she wouldn’t have minded him leaving a kiss-shaped bruise or two on her body. The only thing that kept her from asking him to mark her up—<i>my husband, mine</i>—was the curiosity of the Castle Craig Irregulars; the boys were most acquainted with scrapes and bumps from roughhousing with one another, and an odd-looking love bite on Maddie or Jamie would evoke no shortage of hard-to-answer questions.
</p><p>
“I won’t,” Jamie said, and he was telling the truth: he had already kissed his way down  Maddie’s neck to her shoulder, her collarbone, her breasts, and had started working his mouth over her peaked nipple, causing a shooting bolt of desire to run through her. <i>Fuck.</i>
</p><p>
“Jamie—“ her words caught in her throat as he trailed his mouth from her chest up her body once more, stopping only to press his forehead against hers. The steam from the bath had beaded on his face, on his eyelashes, and in that moment Maddie’s only coherent thoughts were <i>I love you</i> and <i>I want you</i> in a continuous litany. <i>I love you I want you I love you I want you I love you I want you I</i>—
</p><p>
Maddie’s thoughts were interrupted when Jamie suddenly tightened his grip on her waist, solidifying their embrace, and used the edge of the tub to steady himself as he stood up in the tub, holding her to him all the while. She might have let out a small squeak of surprise at the movement—Maddie was a RAF pilot with nerves of steel, but that didn’t mean she was completely invincible in the face of surprise—and then laughed as Jamie stepped them both out of the tub, primly wiped his feet dry on the bath rug, and carried her, still laughing, to their bed.
</p><p>
“What the hell was that for?” she asked, smiling as he set her down on the bed. Absently, she thought about making a fuss over the wet duvet cover—they’d have to strip it off the bed and hang it up to dry before going downstairs to make dinner—but her thoughts took a sharp turn from the duvet to desire when Jamie knelt down by the side of their bed and, firmly grabbing Maddie by her hips, pulled her towards him.
</p><p>
“Honestly?” he asked, tracing his thumbs over the soft edges of her hipbones, her skin still warm from the bath, “I’ve been thinking about how you taste for the past three days, and if I get you off now,”—he punctuated the word “now” by gently dragging his lips across her left thigh, leaving her to squirm and gasp with want—“Then the bath water will still be warm when we’re done, and you can wash up comfortably for dinner.” He turned his head and pressed his mouth to her other thigh, mere inches from where Maddie really wanted him to be.
</p><p>
“Jamie,” Maddie’s voice was needy to her own ears, and she made a mental note to take baths more often when Jamie was coming home. “Please-“
</p><p>
“Please what?” Always teasing.
</p><p>
“Please touch me.” At her words, Jamie smiled a little and leaned in to lick a hard stripe up her center, his hands holding her hips in place as they started forward. Maddie gave a little cry—how was she already so sensitive?—and pressed her heels against Jamie’s back, keeping him close as pleasure built in her body.
</p><p>
Jamie hadn’t always been all that good at eating her out. Maddie hadn’t really had to explain her anatomy, her preferences, to Julie, but Jamie was a different story. Maddie had been surprised to find out, though, that she didn’t mind talking with Jamie about what she wanted, what he wanted. In fact, those conversations were another thing that brought them together, a sort of foreplay that Maddie had never experienced before.
</p><p>
It was with those conversations in mind that Maddie soon tugged on Jamie’s hair, just like he liked, and he lifted his mouth from her cunt to look up at her. His eyes were shining and he was a bit breathless; Maddie could only imagine what she looked like, all undone and panting for him. She pulled again at his hair, leading him up onto the bed and across her body so that he was laying flush against her, not a stitch of clothing between them. Before she said anything, Maddie pressed her lips against his, searching for the taste herself on his mouth.
</p><p>
“Fuck, Maddie-“ he mumbled against her lips, all finesse and decorum thrown out the window. It was like they were teenagers, lost in a swirl of hormones and roaming hands. He was hard against her stomach, and as much as Maddie wanted to alleviate his want by taking him inside of her and riding him, her hands grasping the headboard and their bodies coming together and apart in the most natural of ways, she knew that time was short; they were bound to be interrupted any minute now by the Castle Craig Irregulars.
</p><p>
“We have to-“ she whispered, breathless.
</p><p>
“I know.” Jamie met her eyes, both of them still burning with longing. This was the issue with falling in love during wartime; there was never enough hours in the day. She kissed him again, long and hard and full of the heat that was currently burning through her, then softer, and softer still. Slowly, they worked their way down from the brink, banking the fires that would roar to the surface after-hours when they were able to be alone together once again.
</p>
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